Five years on, Britain seeks low-key exit from Iraq

LONDON (Reuters) - Five years after declaring it stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States in sending troops to invade Iraq, Britain is quietly easing its way out.

Some 150,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, but just 4,100 Britons -- a tenth of the British invasion force -- are left, hunkered down in one base. Even those could be withdrawn by the end of this year, British officials have said.

When they invaded on March 20, 2003, Britain's 40,000 troops were set the task of securing southern Iraq and especially Basra, a city of more than two million people and the strategic hub for Iraq's multi-billion-dollar oil exports.

Britain now has no soldiers in Basra following their withdrawal to a heavily fortified base at Basra airport, several miles outside the city, and southern Iraq remains the scene of frequent violent clashes between rival Iraqi factions.

The hope five years ago that Basra could become a hive of business and trade, and southern Iraq a secure bastion for the country's Shi'ite Muslim majority, has all but disappeared.

For experts on the conflict, Britain's quiet departure underlines just how rapidly aspirations can die. It is in marked contrast to Washington's continued high-level commitment to the rest of Iraq, even though the Democrats could pull out troops if their candidate wins November's U.S. presidential election.

"Just as the British cut and run, give up the ghost and go home, the United States is expanding its commitment to try to stabilize Iraq. That's the dichotomy in a nutshell," said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary college, part of the University of London.

UNPOPULAR WAR

Since taking over from Tony Blair last June, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has sought to draw a line under a war that is unpopular with the British public. Blair's popularity sank when large numbers of Britons took part in protests to oppose the conflict and his staunch backing of President George W. Bush.

"Gordon Brown has drawn down from Basra in an attempt to secure his re-election," Dodge said.

"Basra is now in a horrible mess and Britain has not carried out the promises made by Blair on the eve of the invasion. Frankly, I think it was a shoddy decision to pull out of Basra."

Britain's Ministry of Defence says the bulk of the work that troops set out to do has been achieved, although 175 Britons have been killed and several thousand wounded.

A common refrain from military commanders is that Britain's soldiers have done what they could in difficult circumstances.

As Iraq's security forces have grown in strength, Britain has handed responsibility over to them, transferring authority in all four of Iraq's southern provinces, completing one of the key commitments it had set itself. Brown has promised that Britain will invest in Basra for years to come.

"Things are getting better," Defence Secretary Des Browne said last October as Britain handed over Basra province.

"The Iraqis themselves are much more capable of taking responsibility for their own security... It's an indication of the success of our troops in monitoring, mentoring and training the Iraqi security forces," he said.

VIOLENCE INCREASES AGAIN

Browne appeared to be vindicated for some time. Militia violence, which had mostly been directed at 550 British troops based at a palace in central Basra, declined sharply when they were pulled back to the air base last September.

But since then, with Iraqi troops and police responsible for security, violence has increased again. Militia groups loyal to rival Shi'ite clerics have tightened their stranglehold on Basra.

There have been two high-profile assassinations in the city in the past week, and the man in charge of Basra's police has survived seven attempts on his life by militants angry at his attempts to rid the force of criminal influences.

When Britain pulled back, U.S. officials in Washington expressed frustration, underlying growing rifts over strategy between the allies, although since then the U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has papered over the differences.

But Britain's backsliding prompted Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, to accuse British troops of doing nothing, in effect abandoning Basra and southern Iraq to its fate.

"The militia, the organized crime, is actually making havoc in the city," he told Britain's Channel Four news on Monday. Asked if Britain needed to re-engage rather than pull more troops out as intended, he said: "In my view they do."

"They should not just sit there and do nothing. There are certain responsibilities, especially at least until the end of the year."

Rosemary Hollis, a Middle East expert at London's City University, says southern Iraq is now a "consummate mess" with no elegant way out. But she says British troops could have done little differently, given the resources and aims they had.

"They haven't managed to do the job they originally hoped to achieve," she said. "It wasn't so much that they went in with high expectations. They were just unrealistic expectations.

"When it comes down to it, there are some very tough questions to be asked about the purpose of the entire endeavor and what was achieved."